What elements do you think make a good horror game?
be it assets, screamers, story, etc.
What makes a good game?
What makes a game a horror game?
Does a good horror game mean, that the game is truthful to the horror genre or that it is a good game that happens to have horror elements?
I think it has to fit together. More than the sum of the parts and all that. I recently played a game with fantastic assets, but it was utterly boring.
As for horror, there are many subtypes of horror. If it is suspense, you need more story. If it is graphical horror, your assets better be good. And so on.
But maybe focus on making a good game first and staying true to horror second. So what's a good game? A game that people would want to play and enjoy playing it and do not regret after playing it.
That's different for everyone. Just look what happened to the term rogue-like over the years.
And there is not even consensus what is a genre and what is merely a topic that appears in a game. Zombies are usually in horror games. But Plants vs. Zombies is hardly a horror game.
To me, Resident Evil is a horror game. And thus horror is a genre. But if I compare it to Slender Man, also a horror game, there are fundamental differences.
So maybe it is, what is left when you take everything away from a game, until you cannot take the rest away and still call it that genre. For example, a platformer game without ability to jump or at least fall, is not a platformer to me. Does not have to be a single thing, could also be a combination of things.
Opinions differ about this, of course. You can go to Steam and look at popular games. The tags they have are the consensus of players, so they should at least give a glimpse of how most gamers would classify a game. Hence games being called rogue-like that have nothting at all to do with the game Rogue.
The atmosphere tends to be pretty big for me. Instead of being scary at a few moments due to jumpscares, a good horror game gives the sense that you're not safe and makes you feel unsettled the entire time while playing it. Horror is obviously more complex than that, but most of the good ones I've seen have a good atmosphere and a good presentation.
Speaking from my perspective as someone who specializes in games centered around Japanese horror, I believe that horror games are all about the 'ma'—the use of silence and timing.
To create fear without relying on jump scares, it’s essential to reconsider how 'ma' is used and to make the player feel a sense of unease.
For example, imagine you’re working late at night in an environment where you can hear the sound of an air conditioner. Suddenly, the air conditioner stops, and complete silence takes over. Now, the sounds you make yourself are much sharper, and even the slightest noise becomes more noticeable than before. That subtle sense of discomfort and unease—and the time it takes to recognize it—creates tension.
In my opinion, the kind of fear that makes your spine tingle doesn’t come from loud jump scares, but rather from the sheer silence where nothing can be heard.